


Ash and Bone

by flollius



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Family Feels of all shapes and sizes, Introspective hand-holding is the best, These two are just cute and they have lots in common ok, What am I doing I don't have time for more of this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flollius/pseuds/flollius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fili promises to protect Sigrid. He promises to make it right in the bloodstained ruins of her home after the bodies have been cleaned up and the broken furniture brushed away. He will repair what he and his people have broken.</p><p>But no one expected dragon's flame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ash and Bone

Sigrid picks up the broken cups and bowls and sweeps up spilled flour and wipes at a slick of running oil with a rag. Blood splatters the walls, thick and dark as tar, as though someone had drawn on the walls of her home with angry brush-strokes in shapeless marks that have no meaning to her. She will scrub at them tomorrow, with her horse-hair brush and the soap she made herself with ash and lavender oil and pig-fat.

She’s all right; her hands are shaking and there’s a pounding in her throat and head but Sigrid is keeping it all together. Bain is helping the dwarves, with eyes as dark as obsidian in his bone-white face. He won’t look at her. Tilda is a sobbing wreck, pressing her face into the worn wool of her doll’s hair and she pulls away from Sigrid’s touch. So she leaves her sister and kneels on the bloodstained floor, careful not to cut her fingers on jagged edges of broken pottery.

Her hands are still black. It’s all a flash to her, bright colours with blurred edges, but she remembers the table being torn away from them. Sigrid remembers a cruel twisted hand reaching out and seizing a handful of Tilda’s hair. She remembers her hand tightening around the carving knife she snatched up at the first crash. Sigrid doesn’t remember what happened next, but her hands are covered in blood and even though she scrubs over the stone basin until her palms are red and raw there are still fragments caught in the ridges of her nails and they won’t come out.

She doesn’t look at the bodies. They are dark lumps to her, rough and animal. She doesn’t look at their twisted necks and glassy eyes and mouths and arteries wide open. Sigrid tries to turn away but they are everywhere and soon she learns to pick her way across them as though they’re merely fallen logs, or heavy rolls of fabric strewn about a shop-floor. She’s quite all right, she really is. Her hands are shaking and there’s a pounding in her throat and head but Sigrid is keeping it all together.

The jar of pickled onions has fallen to the floor and broken, steeped in brine and black blood. They look like eyeballs and she tries to pick them up but they ooze through her fingers and roll across the floorboards. Sigrid traps them with her brush and pan and they fall into the pail beside fragments of broken clay.

She stops to watch Bain walk past her. He has one of the creatures under the arms. It’s headless and missing a leg. Blood follows in a wide trail and her brother’s face is pinched and frightened. She longs to throw her arms around him and kiss his cheek, but she knows that if she touches either of them, she will burn like a piece of paper in a furnace and sob and howl and cry. And she can’t put Bain and Tilda through that, not with Da gone.

The air is cool on her face, filled with ice and smoke all at once. Sigrid picks her careful way down the stairs, the pail banging against her leg. The moon is down, only a handful of low lanterns pierce the still darkness and it’s so very quiet. She kneels and upends the pail, watching as pickling onions and pieces of teacups and jars and flour-paste ooze stickily into the water. Sigrid stands, balancing precariously on the edge of the boardwalk down at the warbling shapes of gold and black.

There’s a heavy tread behind her, coming down the stairs. The low thud of a dwarf carrying a burden. Sigrid freezes, the pail dangling from one hand. She holds her breath and doesn’t know why. It’s the blonde dwarf beside her, with most of the pieces of a body draped over his shoulder. She can’t remember who is Kili or who is Fili, they’re knotted together in her mind, one fair and one dark, one injured and screaming in pain and the other gasping with helpless despair.

“Last one.” He groans, standing beside her on the edge of the boardwalk. The corpse slides effortlessly from his shoulder and into the lake without a splash. There are dozens of bodies beneath the water now, sinking slowly to the bottom to bloat and rot and peel away to the bone. She now lives over a mass grave. Sigrid feels as though she’s about to be sick and she turns her face away from the water, staring down at the blonde’s boots.

“Come on.” He grabs her wrist loosely. Sigrid feels a gentle pull but her feet are like tree-roots, buried six feet beneath the earth and no amount of heaving will tear her free. “Sigrid?” Fili-or-Kili steps closer and touches her shoulder. His hands are so wide and thick and heavy, twice as big as her father’s. They seem clumsy. “Sigrid, come inside.” But she can’t move, she _won’t_. The pail is digging against her thigh and her heart feels as though it will explode inside her chest, it’s beating so fast and heavy and it’s too large inside of her.

Fili-or-Kili breathes softly in the dark and has her by the jaw, tilting her head up so he can look her in the eye. His own gleam inside his head like two twin stars. He’s outlines and shadows and glints of silver in the darkness and she can’t see his face. “It’s all right.” His whisper is as soft as rain, and for a moment she wonders if she’s imagined it.

Sigrid opens her mouth to speak, and in all in a horrible rush of pain and humiliation she hears a choked sob spill out. The pail slips from her fingers and clatters noisily against the ground and she pressed a flattened palm against her shaking lips – and before she even realises it was ever coming, Sigrid starts to cry. She was all right before, picking her way across the bodies and tiptoeing around tar-stains of blood and watching her brother bent almost double under the strain of the corpses in his arms. But now she’s crying, and they’re loud, ugly sobs that scratch in her throat and leave her chest spasming in pain.

And she falls. She falls and the dwarf catches her, wraps his arms around her chest and lets her bury her face in his shoulder. He’s so heavy and dense. There’s a rumour, or a myth, or a legend, that the bones of dwarves are carved from stone and as she feels those arms encircle her, Sigrid believes it. There’s no patronising hair-stoke, no sugar-sweet whisper of _there there_ and _it’s all right dear_. He just holds her up while she leaks out.

It could be minutes or hours or days, Sigrid doesn’t know. She only feels the falling and the pain in her throat and the feeling of wet fabric against her face. When she’s sure that her eyes are no longer dripping and she can open her mouth and breathe without sobs breaking out, she lifts her head and wipes at her face, too embarrassed to look at him.

“Sigrid—”

“I’m fine.” She tries to iron out that quaver in her voice. “I’ll be all right.” Sigrid forces a smile and it’s so horrible and false and she knows he can see through it, even in this darkness. She steps away and his hand is still stretched out to her, his own eyes very bright and face twisted in guilt and pity.

-

Sigrid lights the stove and fills the kettle. She doesn’t know what else to do. The children are already in bed, sleeping fitfully and casting shadows against the wall. But she can’t sleep. Sigrid makes chamomile; she thinks the soothing leaf will calm them all. The two older dwarves murmur at each other in their ancient language and cast dark looks at the screened bed in the corner.

The teacups are all broken, and she pours the steaming tea into small bowls and clay mugs meant for ale. There isn’t enough for her; she carries the last mug across the room and behind the low screen, where the other two rest on her family’s only bed.

“I made tea.” She holds out her weak offering with the corner of her lips twitching in what could pass as a smile. The dwarf sits on the edge of the bed with the younger brother in his lap. Her own siblings sleep on the other side of the mattress, against the wall. “Chamomile.”

“Thank you.” His voice rasps and there are shadows under his blue eyes but he tries to smile back. In his lap, the dwarf moans and the smile fades. There’s a fleeting shadow of pain and the blonde runs his thumb over the tense brow of his brother. “Hush, Kili.” It’s Fili then. Sigrid bites on the tip of her tongue and balls her hands in the pocket of her skirts. Fili has spread Kili’s hair over his legs and he strokes it the way one would a kitten, soft and loving and careful. She tries to imagine herself sitting on the bed, cupping Bain’s face in her shaking hands as he moaned and writhed in pain while poison corrupted his innocent veins. The thought sickens inside her and she can taste bile for a terrible moment.

It flashes behind her eyelids as she blinks. The bright edges, Tilda’s wide-open mouth, the orc gripping her by the hair and dragging her away and her nails are etching red marks in her palms. It hurts and she relaxes her fists, bringing them back into the light. She doesn’t know what to say. This is strange and alien to her. Sigrid can brew tea and clean up the mess and scrub away at the stains, she can kiss Bain’s scrapes and stroke Tilda’s hair while she shakes from a bad dream but this is a pain that cuts deep, down to the bone and there’s no way she can stitch it up. The silence passes and Sigrid stares down at the blood dried on her hands, the blood that won’t come off and when she looks up she sees that Fili is staring at her hands too.

“I stabbed it with a carving knife.” Sigrid’s voice is dull. It feels separate, as though a ghost has possessed her. It’s not her that is speaking. “The _thing_ , it came for Tilda and took her and I had the knife in my hand and I...”

“You protected your sister.” There’s nothing more that needs to be said. Sigrid’s throat closes and they look at each other, children of exiled kings, protectors and peasants and at this moment, orphans. There’s failure written all over Fili’s face, in the shadows under his eyes and the downward pull of his lips and Sigrid wishes there was something she could say. But she’s so _damn_ helpless and mute and all she can do is bow her head in a single, silent nod.

She sits down on the bed, beside him. He slurps noisily at his tea, and if it was Bain or Tilda she would scold them. It’s such a childish, carefree sound and instead of a usual frown of disapproval, it makes her smile. Fili catches her grin in the corner of her blue eyes and for a moment, he smiles back. They are touching, hip and knee and thigh, although Sigrid’s toes brush the floor and Fili’s booted feet swing in the air.

“Here.” He passes the half-drunk mug to her with a little nod of his head. “Have some.” Sigrid takes it with both hands and their hands touch. She feels the ridges of his knuckles and nails beneath her fingertips. It reminds her of old, heavy wood, the weathered sort that is used for beams and docks and the sides of houses. With his free hand, he touches her shoulder. It’s supposed to be a gesture of comfort, but the weight is almost crushing her. His braids are unravelling, and hers are long gone. Her ribbon was torn off in the struggle and the dark locks are knotted and snarled and in places clumped together with orc-blood. She will need to wash it tomorrow, after she’s cleaned the walls and floors of blood. There’s no more of her red clover shampoo left so she will have to use the soap to get it all out. It will be dull and coarse and stiff as straw but at least it will be clean.

She passes the tea back, and again their hands touch. But this time, he holds on a little longer, his fingers closed over hers and blue eyes staring straight into her. He licks his lips and breathes in rapidly as though there’s something he wants to say.

“I will make this up to you.” There’s a rush of colour in Fili’s cheeks, so obvious against his tired, pale skin. Sigrid realises she’s not breathing. “I can never apologise properly Sigrid. For bringing those monsters here, for causing your father’s arrest – I am so very, very sorry.” His hand tightens around the mug. He bends over to put it down and thread his fingers out of Kili’s hair. He takes her hands now, both of them, closing his thick, heavy fingers around hers. “I will protect you from whatever comes next. I will make this right, I swear on my father’s grave. I will undo everything. I _promise you._ ”

She bites down on her tongue because she knows it not possible. Fili might negotiate her father’s release. He might fix the hole in her roof and the broken window and get her new cups and jars and vases. But he can’t put the light back in Bain’s eyes or stop Tilda from screaming. She doesn’t think about herself. She doesn’t need to, she’s all right. But she looks into his eyes and sees the failure there, flecks of shadow in the blue. He knows there are some things he can’t repair. Kili stirs with a little groan but Fili won’t stop looking at her, not now. He’s begging for her forgiveness.

“I know.” She sees the lines deepen around his eyes in what looks like a smile. Sigrid feels his hands tighten around hers, squeezing, and in his thumb she feels the low throb of his pulse. It beats against her, softly, surely, picking up with a gradual, almost-imperceptible speed. But she feels it.


End file.
